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According to Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of natural selection, features such as coloration evolved by providing individual animals with a reproductive advantage. For example, individuals with slightly better camouflage than others of the same species would, on average, leave more offspring.
Animal coloration, readily observable, soon provided strong and independent lines of evidence, from camouflage, mimicry and aposematism, that natural selection was indeed at work. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] The historian of science Peter J. Bowler wrote that Darwin's theory "was also extended to the broader topics of protective resemblances and mimicry ...
Anoles - The majority of anoles (Dactyloidae) can change their color depending on things like emotions (for example, aggression or stress), activity level, levels of light and as a social signal (for example, displaying dominance). Frogs, e.g. gray treefrog and Peron's tree frog (which can change colour in less than one hour).
The book's general method is to present a wide range of examples from across the animal kingdom of each type of coloration, including marine invertebrates and fishes as well as terrestrial insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The examples are supported by many of Cott's own drawings, diagrams, and photographs.
Aposematism is the advertising by an animal, whether terrestrial or marine, to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. [1] This unprofitability may consist of any defenses which make the prey difficult to kill and eat, such as toxicity, venom , foul taste or smell, sharp spines, or aggressive nature.
The examples are of a fish, an antelope, and a bird. The artist Abbott Handerson Thayer in his 1909 book Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom argued that animals were concealed by a combination of countershading and "ruptive" marks, which together "obliterated
Negro said that there are likely other forms of animal coloration that served as nighttime camouflage, which has not been as well studied as daytime concealment tactics.
Thayer's 1902 patent application. He failed to convince the US Navy. The English zoologist Edward Bagnall Poulton, author of The Colours of Animals (1890) discovered the countershading of various insects, including the pupa or chrysalis of the purple emperor butterfly, Apatura iris, [2] the caterpillar larvae of the brimstone moth, Opisthograptis luteolata [a] and of the peppered moth, Biston ...